Virtual Machine in Azure Part 1: Create virtual machine and connect to it

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Hi everyone — azure is now officially available for registration in Vietnam.

And one very nice Azure service is the virtual machine. You are allowed to create a virtual machine just like a real one, running Windows Server 2012 or 2014, or even create a virtual machine to try out the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Creating the virtual machine

Sign in to the azure portal and create a Storage Account. This step can be done automatically, but creating it by hand lets you give it a meaningful name: https://manage.windowsazure.com

Next, create a Virtual Machine from the Gallery

Here you can pick from a lot of Images, including images with Visual Studio 2013 preinstalled, and even the Windows 10 Enterprise Technical Preview

Give it a name that is easy for you to remember. For example Windows81VM or something like that

Pick the specs for your machine. If you pick an Image with a lot of stuff preinstalled, you should go for slightly higher specs. Note that the higher the specs, the more it costs

Create your username and password. You must remember this username and password

Availability means your VM is backed up in a few other places besides where you created it. Of course it costs money

Once everything is done, hit Create. Wait while it partitions, creates the virtual machine, registers it, boots it, blah blah blah — it takes a long time.

Signing in

Once it’s created you have to sign in. And you sign in with Windows Remote Desktop

After the virtual machine has finished booting, click the connect button to download an .RDP file. The connect button only shows up on the dashboard of the Virtual Machine you created

Double click this file to run it and you’ll see a sign-in box. Now comes the awkward part

Select “Other Account”. In the username box, type it in the form “hostname\username”. Get the hostname from the virtual machine’s dashboard in Azure. For the password, type the password you set when creating the virtual machine

You will run into a few certificate warnings. Just allow them. At this point you can sign in to the virtual machine.